Modern communication networks continue to grow at a rapid pace in both geographical size (e.g., sites, racks, physical ports, interconnects) and traffic volume (i.e., bandwidth requirements). Moreover, communication networks are increasingly required to support diverse types of traffic and higher-agility traffic patterns.
To support these requirements, communication networks, such as carrier networks, access networks, core networks, and the like, utilize underlying optical transport systems for transporting, multiplexing and switching communications through high-speed optical fiber links. Many optical transport systems are migrating toward utilizing entirely packet-based communications. That is, optical transport systems for large-scale networks are transitioning to packet-optimized optical transport networks, referred to as Packet Optical Transport.
Packet-Optical Transport represents a convergence of converging time-division multiplexing (TDM) and wave-division multiplexing (WDM) technologies. As such, large-scale packet-optical transport systems utilize a variety of components including Re-configurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs), Photonic Cross Connects (PXCs), optical cross-connects (OXCs), Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing equipment (DWDMs), amplifiers, transponders, Optical Termination Terminals (OTTs) and other equipment.